1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to monitoring audio. In particular, the present invention relates to systems and methods for monitoring sound, including voice, music or any other audible noise, from any source and for allowing the monitoring to occur from a remote location. Implementation of the present invention embraces the use of any type of telephone, or alternatively without a telephone system.
2. Background and Related Art
Business owners and supervisors have recognized the benefit of being able to listen to conversations of their employees in work related situations to ensure that a proper image of the employer is projected to customers. This is particularly true for such businesses that commonly exchange with customers via telephone conversations. Listening to the conversations allows the supervisors to evaluate and train the employees in their customer service skills, to monitor the kinds of concerns raised by customers, and to witness the use of abusive language, thereby resulting in providing improved customer service and increased sales performance.
Traditional techniques used to monitor telephone conversations include providing a physical connection to the telephone wire that is to be monitored. For example, a permanent splice can be made on the monitored telephone wire. Alternatively, a clip may be placed at a junction box, as is typically performed by a telephone repairman. While these techniques allow for the monitoring of a telephone wire, the permanent splice limits the monitoring to only that particular telephone line and the clip requires a manual process of moving the clip from one telephone wire to another.
Another traditional technique includes having the line used for monitoring and the line that is being monitored routed through the same local switch. By way of example, a sales supervisor who has two telephone lines can monitor a sales line at his/her office through the use of a bridge between the sales line and a supervisory line. While this technique provides a mechanism for monitoring, it offers no flexibility in changing the monitoring set-up and only enables local monitoring within phone system. Accordingly, when for example a salesperson for the business works out of a sales office that is different from the office of the sales supervisor, the sales and supervisory lines may not be serviced by the same system or local switch. The sales supervisor is thus unable to monitor the outside sales line because a mechanical connection or bridge cannot be established between the sales and supervisory lines. Thus, the supervisor is restricted to monitoring only the local sales force, which is a great disadvantage in today's business world where it is typical to have a sales office in one location and a supervisory office in another location.
Another technique includes receiving a call into a particular system and then routing that call through another line. With the increase in employees working from their homes, a technique was created whereby a customer may call into a system and that system then assigns and routs the call to an agent located in his/her home. Because the call is routed through the internal system, the call may be monitored from within the system. While this technique allows for monitoring to occur, the monitoring is limited to local monitoring. Moreover, this technique of receiving and then routing calls to a remote location typically incurs large long distance costs for each call received, especially when the incoming call is made on a toll-free line and then is routed to a long-distance number.
Thus, while techniques currently exist that enable a telephone conversation to be monitored by a third party, challenges still exist, including limiting any monitoring that is performed to local systems. Accordingly, it would be an improvement in the art to augment or even replace current techniques with other techniques.